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Saturday, March 30, 2013

Making Our Own Baby Food

When my baby was slightly older than 5 months old, I was so eager to introduce solids to her but was not quite sure on how to make one or what to introduce. To satisfy my curiosity, I bought a jar of fruit purée from local supermarket which label says suitable for 4-6 months old baby. I must say that my baby could take her first solid food very well and from then on, I started giving her mashed banana and pear purée every once in a while.

Next, on Naomi's last month's appointment with the clinic, her nurse briefed me on what food I should introduce to Naomi when she hits 6 months old and how to prepare them. Also, she advised me to avoid feeding Naomi with instant baby food or instant infant cereal available in the market because they contain chemicals and told me that it's best to make home-made baby food for Naomi every day.

At that time, I thought I would just start feeding my baby with home-made soft rice porridge when she's 7-8 months old (because cooking rice porridge everyday sounded like another time-consuming and demanding task in my already busy life) and planned to just finish two cans of instant infant cereal that I've bought few months back. Nevertheless, after pondering over what the nurse said to me and my fellow Mommies' pearls of wisdom when it comes to feeding solids to baby, I decided to just use instant infant cereal during emergency or travels and instead, cook home-made soft rice porridge with different vegetables to my baby every single day.

Fast forward, in the past two weeks, my new morning routine after I brush my teeth, wash my sleepy face with cold tap water and put contact lenses on my blurry eyes is going straight to my kitchen to defrost a little bit of frozen beef and start cutting the vegetables-of-the-day for Naomi's rice porridge. I completely quit being lazy in preparing fresh home-made food to my baby and actually feel a tad of guilt every time I have to feed her with instant infant food when I'm not convenient to cook.

So, you ask, why bother making home-made baby food?

Truth is, making fruit purées or plain rice porridge for baby is not that difficult and complicated (although it does take 45 mins to 1 hour a day to prepare and cook a small pan of rice porridge). It is doable and the sky is the limit when it comes to varying the daily menu with different fruits and vegetables. I love exploring new recipes for my baby's food and am always excited in shopping and testing new veggies for Naomi's rice porridge.

The fresh produce I bought for my baby.

However, I also cook part of them for my husband and myself

as these are way too much to feed a young baby.

I can vary my baby's menu every day to make sure that she gets enough nutritions from various fruits and vegetables on her daily solid food.

I can save money by making home-made baby food. Fresh vegetables for a week stock cost less than or around RM10 and 250gr of beef worth RM5 can actually be frozen and then mixed with porridge for 10-12 days' feed. By making home-made baby food, I can control the portion of ingredients that I use every day based on how much solids intake my baby consumes in a day and minimize the potential waste of food. Home-made food is still the most economical food of all.

Buying various of vegetables for my baby.

Best of all, I know what I exactly feed to my baby. I've checked the nutritional values and safety of each fruit choice or vegetable that I put into Naomi's porridge in magazines or other reliable online sources. I can make sure that all the vegetables and fruits are cleanly washed before I cook or purée them. The skin and excess fat of the meat I use for cooking her porridge are always trimmed. I ensure that the porridge is soft enough before I feed that to my little foodie. I maintain my baby food's freshness very well by never keeping any rice porridge overnight. On top of that, I can confirm that I put no MSG, harmful chemicals, salt and other seasoning into my baby's food.

Lastly, I actually learn tons of new knowledge from preparing home-made food for my baby as somehow I need to do preliminary research before making baby food and am forced to read and ask around a lot of useful information about food, health, baby food preparation and recipes.

A happy and healthy baby is every Mom's wish.

To conclude, Moms, let's just go to the DIY route in making baby food! It's for our babies' ultimate well-being anyway!

Want to get instant updates on the various baby food that I prepare to my baby every day? Please follow my Instagram account. If you wish to know the recipes I use in making my baby's solid food, read them here.